How Jennifer Lawrence conquered the world

She snorts when she laughs, swears like a sailor and takes selfies on the red carpet. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire star is anything but a diva.

By Laura Parker

16 November 2013 — 3:00am

Jennifer Lawrence has a new haircut, and the entire Internet is talking about it. "Important Jennifer Lawrence hair news: Jennifer Lawrence has cut her hair short!" the Daily Mail announced. "Jennifer Lawrence Debuts Short Hairdo, Is Now Sporting A Pixie Cut," said the Huffington Post, which even had a dedicated webpage for Lawrence's hair, where it collected all its reportage concerning the stunning 23-year-old actress's follicular adventures.

"It's so dumb. I mean, come on - it's just hair." Lawrence is in the top-floor suite of the Beverly Hills Four Seasons with her Hunger Games co-star, Josh Hutcherson, promoting the coming sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. She is in pain - an upset stomach - but trying not to show it. She pinches Hutcherson on the arm and he says, on cue: "Actually, we've decided that I'll be taking all questions about Jennifer's hair from now on. You're free to quote me as her." He then delivers a well-rehearsed speech about the ins and outs of Lawrence's new do, and the two collapse into giggles. "Thanks Joshie," she says, caressing his face.

There is little Lawrence can do right now without stirring up a frenzied online reaction. It began with her performance at this year's Oscars, where she tripped on her way to the podium to receive the Best Actress award for Silver Linings Playbook, laughed about it afterwards - "What do you mean what happened? Look at my dress!" - did a shot before greeting the press and told Jack Nicholson he was rude for interrupting her during a live interview. She jokes about getting fired, snorts when she laughs and uploads photos of herself making funny faces on the red carpet. She seems so distinctively genuine, so anti-Hollywood in her frankness and likeability, that it's hard to regard her as a celebrity.

Although there are reports that Lawrence was given media training in preparation for Catching Fire - making eye contact, speaking clearly, keeping on topic - in person she is funny, animated and loud. She swears frequently. She grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, with two older brothers who would fight over the right to bully her and who still call her ugly now that she's famous. "My family is not the kind of family that would ever let me turn into an asshole," she once told UK magazine Fabulous.

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Jennifer Lawrence's much-publicised new haircut.

She talks fondly of her family - she brought them all to the Oscars last year - and of keeping that part of her life unchanged. "My life at home, with my friends, my family - it's a bubble I've created that stays the same throughout all of this," she says.

Lawrence came to New York in 2004 to try out for a couple of modelling gigs but was picked up by an acting agent instead. She started small, doing MTV commercials and brief roles on television shows such as Monk, Cold Case and Medium, before landing a recurring role in the TBS sitcom The Bill Engvall Show in 2007. Her breakout role came in 2010, a quietly stirring performance as the lead in independent drama Winter's Bone, adapted from Daniel Woodrell's novel about a teenage girl in rural America who must provide for her entire family when her meth-cooking father goes missing. The film was a critical success, winning awards at Sundance and international film festivals, and earning four Academy Award nominations, including a nomination for Lawrence as Best Actress. She is the youngest actress ever to be nominated for two Academy Awards for this category.

"Everyone always asks me if it's weird for me to see myself on film posters or billboards or whatever," she says. "But I think it's weird how un-weird it is. Does that make sense? It doesn't hit me, because it's not me up there. It's a character. If it was a poster of me just walking to the grocery store or something, that would feel weird."

Acclimatising to celebrity is a predicament Lawrence shares with the 16-year-old protagonist of the Hunger Games films, Katniss Everdeen. The films are based on Suzanne Collins' bestselling trilogy about a post-apocalyptic nation that forces two teenagers from each of its 12 districts to fight to the death in an annual gladiator-style event, recorded and broadcast live to the entire nation. Katniss - played by Lawrence - selflessly volunteers in place of her younger sister, smiling for the cameras despite her fate.

Jennifer Lawrence falls on her way to the stage to receive the award for best actress for her role in the Silver Linings Playbook.

The first Hunger Games film, released last year, was a commercial hit. The film made US$155 million in its opening weekend at the US box office - the third largest opening weekend gross in North America, behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and The Dark Knight. The sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, will be released later this month. (The final film in the series, Mockingjay, is scheduled for release in two parts, a la Harry Potter and Twilight, in 2014 and 2015 respectively.)

Despite being a fan of the books, Lawrence was initially hesitant to accept the offer to play Katniss in the films - the sheer size of the project daunted her after her smallish roles in mostly independent productions. (Lawrence once tried out for the role of Bella Swan in the Twilight films, later telling The Guardian she was relieved she didn't get it after seeing Kristen Stewart "getting papped wherever she went".)

"I'm very relieved that I did decide to take [the role of Katniss]," Lawrence says. "It's not even that I was scared, more that I knew [the decision] deserved a lot of thought. It was going to be life changing, so I really wanted to make sure I knew what the hell I was doing."

No one who has worked with Lawrence seems to have any doubts on that front. Francis Lawrence, the director of Catching Fire, speaks of her abilities as an actor with such conviction that it's as if the pair have been working together for years.

There are moments where I feel that there's a certain expectation I know I'll never meet.

"She works unlike anybody I have ever seen before," he says. "She's very instinctual, she works straight from the gut. She doesn't have to stay in character all day, she doesn't have to talk about it endlessly - she just does it."

Her energy and goofiness on the Catching Fire set have been well documented. Earlier this month, Lawrence, Hutcherson and fellow cast mate Liam Hemsworth participated in a series of online Q&A sessions about the new film, in which Lawrence revealed that the best part about working on Catching Fire was being able to pee in the ocean while wearing a wetsuit.

She also admitted to accidentally spitting egg in Francis Lawrence's face when they first met, and passing up on a script that made her cry because she couldn't stop picturing Amanda Seyfried's face in the lead role instead.

Actor Jeffrey Wright - who joined the cast for the first time in Catching Fire - was so taken with Lawrence upon meeting her that he felt it only right to fill a Tiffany's jewellery box with a bag of crickets he brought from a nearby pet store and present it to Lawrence as a nice-to-meet-you gift.

"What do you give the girl who has everything?" Wright says. "She was laughing and screaming all over the place. I ended up regretting it later because when you try and cram three hundred crickets into a Tiffany's box they're not all going to fit, and the ones that didn't ended up under my bed and behind my dresser in the hotel singing to me all night."

Donald Sutherland, who plays President Snow in the movie, is even more emphatic about Lawrence's talent: "She is able to take in all the information and become a vessel, a delivery system, for truth. You respond to the truthfulness of her performances in every character she's played. What she does is so well observed without being calculated or contrived. When you work like she works, time just stops."

In past interviews, Lawrence has attributed her spontaneity in front of the camera to something else entirely: laziness. She likes to play up the fact that she's never had an acting lesson or that she doesn't even memorise her lines until the night before - confessions some actors might find ill-considered. But the thought that these remarks might come across as unprofessional or, worse, that people might think that she doesn't take acting seriously enough, doesn't faze her.

"As offended as I could be, I can't really argue with that," she says. "I don't even memorise my lines before each shot. [While working on Catching Fire] I'd say to Francis, the director, 'Which scene are we doing again?'" At this, Hutcherson jumps to her defence. "There's a lot more that goes into your performance than just being a naturally good actress," he says to her.

"You have the focus when you need it, you choose the right movies, and you can figure out different ways to play different characters - compare Katniss to your character in Silver Linings Playbook.

''That's acting, that's not just something you just do naturally."

Lawrence punches the air. "That's right goddammit," she says, laughing. Then, almost to herself: "But there are moments where I feel that there's a certain expectation I know I'll never meet."

She is continuously asked whether winning an Oscar has changed her in any way, or made her feel more pressure about her career. She says the short answer is no. The long answer, like her, is self-deprecating and honest.

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"Maybe I'll feel a tiny bit of pressure when I really mess up or forget my lines and think, 'Ugh, I wonder if people think I don't know what I'm doing.' Then Woody [Harrelson] would turn to me and be all like, 'Well, you better give that Oscar back then'."